Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1

by Joshua W. Nelson

  “Somewhere there is a door. You know where it is. But you don’t know where it goes. Where is that door?”

  Simon’s face got very pale. He backed away a couple of steps, but hit the side of the alley. He started shaking his head no, “I don’t want to go back there. It’s too dangerous.”

  “You don’t need to go back there, just me. And what was dangerous about it?”

  “There were monsters all over the place. One of my flock got away, and I went running after it. Sounds like that happens to me a lot huh? But really I am a very good shepherd, it was just one of those days and with the lightning and the thunder the poor thing got scared and started running and…”

  “Simon. Stop rambling. Take a deep breath. What was dangerous? Where is the door?”

  “When I found my lost sheep I saw over the rise a door set against the side of a hill. As I started to walk up to it, a bunch of really big animals came out from behind the hill. There were two bears, a boar, and a wolf. I mean you don’t normally see that kind of thing. All of ‘em together like that. But as I walked backwards, so did they. So I thought to test it, and started walking forward again. The wolf lunged at me, and I just barely got away alive. My sheep wasn’t so lucky.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss Simon. but I still need to know, where is the door?”

  “Here, I’ll just show you on your map and then you’ll let me go right?”

  “Even if you don’t want to show me Simon, I won’t hold you. But I did just save you from the sewers, so it would be the right and proper thing to do.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m forgetting my manners and all that. Place really scared me. The sewer I mean, not the door. I mean the door too, but…”

  “Rambling again Simon.”

  “Right, sorry. Here you go, I marked it on your map. Good luck to you and your friends with those beasts, I don’t think even you four could take them, no offense.”

  I smiled at Simon and said, “None taken. Now go home, and get cleaned up. And I would suggest you sleep for an entire day. You will feel much better after.”

  “Thank you again for everything, and please tell your friends I said thank you to them as well,” Simon said as he shook my hand. Before he could say another word, I stepped back through the gate.

  * * *

  “Sorry about the delay guys. I was convinced we would get some kind of quest if I just asked the right question or said the right phrase. Unfortunately, nada,” I lied to the group. I felt horrible about doing so, but if I didn’t they would have just asked more questions. Couldn’t have that.

  “It’s not a problem. Thanks for trying. Let’s get back to that room. I think we are all at full mana, and if there is a boss in there, we should be ready for it.”

  We headed back to the large room and looked inside. We couldn’t see to the other side of the room, as the room had a concealing mist within it. Which made me think that two could play that game.

  “Alright guys, this is going to suck for all involved, but mostly for me,” I said.

  “I like this already,” Wayne said. “Normally when something sucks it ends up being me that gets thrown in the thrasher.”

  “We can’t see very far into that fog, which means you know there is something hiding inside of it.” They all nodded their heads. “So I am going to use my Conceal and Stealth and go check out the interior.”

  To a man, they all groaned. I knew that my Conceal and Stealth were slow and that meant they would have to sit around for a bit, but I didn’t think I would get such a strong negative reaction.

  “It’s a good call, Alex. I’m just thinking about how far the tectonic plates will shift by the time you are done,” Jason said.

  “Hmmm, I’ve always wanted to read all of Moby Dick in one sitting. Think this might be my chance?” Wayne added.

  “Oh! I’m going to do my crossword!” Dan finished. Dan obviously didn’t notice that the other two had been joking, or he did and saw a squirrel and totally lost his train of thought and just came back to crosswords.

  “Funny. Very funny all of you. Except Dan, which doesn’t sound right at all. I’ll let you know what I find when I’m finished,” I said while trying to engage my Conceal and Stealth. And then got ready to begin slowly, oh so slowly, to make my way into the fog.

  It only took me a few tries to get both my Conceal and Stealth going. I told the guys I would be back soon, to which they laughed, and headed into the fog. The room was larger than I thought at first glance and it took me a few minutes to move across the length of it till I finally saw the mobs. There were three of them. There were two of the Giant Venomous Rabbits, who were both blue and one Guardian Venomous Rabbit, who was yellow. I relayed this information to the group and then started to make my way back to the hallway. After what seemed an eternity, I made it back to the group.

  Everyone looked over to me as I disengaged my Conceal and Stealth. I popped up behind them, just because I wanted to scare them a bit. Jason and Wayne jumped a bit, but Dan seemed off in his own realm. “It takes forever for you to get anywhere, but that is definitely a useful skill to have Alex,” Wayne said.

  “That’s the truth brother. How goes the crossword Dan?” I asked.

  “Almost done bro, this one was hard. Oh yeah, and 7,” Dan said.

  “Seven what?” I asked.

  “Just 7 bro. It’s the last number in Pi. That’s how long your shit took, I was able to figure it out,” Dan said while smiling.

  “Ha. Ha. How are we going to take these guys? No way we can pull all three at the same time,” I commented.

  “Clear to the gate and then try to boomerang the yellow? That way we can pull the blues into the corridor first and finish them off, and if our pull doesn’t work out we just leave the sewer?” Jason asked.

  It seemed like a good idea, but Wayne made a good point, “I worry though, what if by all of us leaving the sewer we just reset the whole dungeon and then have to start over?” None of us wanted to redo the two hours of work we had just accomplished.

  “I can try to snare the Guardian. Kite him around the room while you guys take out the two blues. I’m going to have some massive aggro on me though if it takes you guys a long time. But while I’m running it around, that should give Allister time to heal Wayne,” Dan suggested.

  “Can you land your snare on a mob that many levels higher than you?” I asked Dan.

  “Might as well find out!” Dan replied enthusiastically.

  With our plan in place, we ventured into the room and the fog immediately lifted once the mobs had us in their aggro. Dan’s first attempt at snare on the Guardian failed, and his curses were reminiscent of when Wayne was repeatedly falling on his face. Thankfully, the second cast landed and Dan began to kite the Guardian around the room. The rest of us moved to the center of the large room to give Dan the ability to use the outer walls as his running area. Wayne quickly got aggro on both mobs and we started to whittle one, and then the other down. Jason said he was good with mana, and so Dan ran the mob over toward us once Wayne had both Taunt and Bash ready to go. Wayne ran out to meet the Guardian before it got to our group, as it was still moving slow because of Dan’s snare, and hit it with Taunt and Bash. Both were successful, but the mob still came at Dan, as he had cast more than one snare on it during our time fighting the blues.

  “That thing hits me Wayne and it is going to hurt worse than when I rode a bike for three weeks without a seat!” Dan yelled.

  Dan kept backing up, trying to avoid the Guardian’s reach, and finally Wayne was able to establish aggro. The Guardian turned on Wayne and started going to town. After three seconds, just to be safe, Dan and I both engaged. Me with my dagger and Dan with his arrows.

  “He has a Bash that Stuns. Looks like it lasts for two seconds. I’m still keeping aggro,” Wayne said.

  The mob was down to 50 percent life when it released an area of effect spell. How the hell a bunny has spells I will never know. Stupid video games.

 
The area of effect, also known as an AoE, caused poison damage to all of us. It was a pretty substantial AoE as well, taking off 20 hit points every six seconds, and doing substantial damage over time (these spells were also called DoTs for damage over time.) Dan could have healed himself, but we decided to focus on damage instead of healing. That’s what we had a cleric for. And in the end, it was fine if Dan and I died, but Wayne and Jason had to stay alive. The AoE lasted for two minutes, taking 400 hit points total. When the Guardian hit 25 percent health, it cast the spell again and we were once again poisoned. We all had enough constitution though to last through both of the AoEs. I imagine if we had not been so gracious with our Constitution skill points, this could have ended badly. Wayne had 3100 hit points base, with an extra 200 for being a barbarian, so he was riding out the AoE. With Dan, Jason, and I at less than 50 percent health and Wayne near full, the Guardian died.

  There was much celebration between us, and I went to loot the body. I found 3 silver, an undamaged rabbit skin, and a surprise loot that I linked to the group:

  “Damn that is nice!” Wayne said. “I think all of us could use that resist to poison down here in the sewer.”

  “Agreed,” Jason said. “I think we should roll for it.” The game had a function that would allow you to pick a random number between 1 and 100. Whoever had the highest number would win the loot. Gamers would say “roll” harkening back to old board games where people would roll a multi-sided die to see who would win a piece of loot.

  I looked over at Wayne and he gave his head an imperceptible shake, and then glanced over at Jason. I was thinking the same thing. With the Wisdom and Intelligence, I preferred Jason have it as well. And none of us had Poison based attacks. All that left was Dan.

  “Hey Dan, did you want to roll on the cloak?” I asked.

  Dan had been sitting against the wall with his eyes closed. He finally opened them and said, “Huh? Oh, let me take a look. Nah, give it to Allibaster.” Dan hadn’t even been paying attention the whole time.

  “You better be close to finished with that thing,” I said.

  “Dude! This one is hard! And do you know how difficult it is to do a crossword that you only have in your mind? Now let me finish so I can focus like normal!” To which we all laughed. Because normal for Dan was what was clinically considered a severe case of ADHD.

  “Well there you have it. Congrats Allister!” I said.

  Jason looked over at me and Wayne, “You guys don’t want to roll? But Naugha said it would be good for any of us.”

  “But it would be best for you. And we decided long ago, when we were first killing bunnies in the fields, that we build the team before ourselves,” Wayne said and then quickly looked over to Dan to see if he was going to make a comment about inspirational posters again. But Dan still had his eyes closed.

  “Wow, you guys really are the best group I’ve ever gamed with. Even Dan. Well even Dan on some levels. Thank you so much!” Jason said while looting the item and equipping it to his character. The result was a long flowing white cape of beautiful fur. It actually looked pretty bad ass.

  “My eyes are closed Sallister but I can still hear you,” Dan said. “And you’re welcome dude, totally best for you.”

  I was about to tell Dan to get up and get moving when I heard him mumble, “Damn it all to hell. Just one more. Five letter word for ‘end of all’. ‘E’ is the second letter.”

  I then watched Dan jump three feet in the air, when Wayne leaned down and hissed into his ear, “Deeeaaatthhh.”

  * * *

  We searched the large room in full, which was much easier now that the mysterious fog had lifted. We didn’t find any secret rooms or extra loot, but we did find a staircase that led down to another level of the sewer. Once we were fully buffed and mana was at full, we headed down into the sewer’s second level.

  After the fight with the Guardian, we asked Jason to start using his level 6 resist poison buff. It only gave us a +20 to poison resistance, but that was better than nothing. With Jason’s new cloak, he was now at +35 resistance to poison.

  The second level of the sewer had a different layout than the first, so we had to clear the whole thing again before we could effectively map the area. This took another two hours. However, during that time we each got another level, taking us to 11. We continued to get 50 Copper to 1 Silver on each mob, and some random drops of rabbit fur and rabbit meat. We knew these only sold for a few copper to the merchants up in Port Town, so we didn’t worry if we had to leave some behind because our inventory got full. And the items had a weight of 0.1 so it didn’t threaten to overload us either and make us fatigued.

  After the two hours of clearing the second level of the sewer we came to another one of the large rooms that I believed signified the boss fight. We were hoping it was the Queen so we could get out of this sewer. I once again volunteered to use my Conceal and Stealth to investigate the room. Wayne said he would try War and Peace this time. I flipped him the bird just before my Conceal worked and then tried for another minute to get my Stealth to work.

  Checking out the room was as slow a process as it was the first time around, and I was not happy when I finally got through the fog and saw what we had in store for us. This time it wasn’t just the boss and two mobs, but the boss and four mobs. The four non-boss mobs were blue at least. The boss was yellow, but I was guessing it was going to be a hard yellow just given the size of it. The Mutated Queen Rabbit was almost two meters high at the head. And she looked mean. Her razor sharp teeth extended past her lower jaw and her eyes were not just red, but bleeding from the corners. This was one ugly looking bunny bitch.

  The guys were equally dismayed when I told them what we had in store for us. We couldn’t just filter the mobs into the hallways and force them to attack us one at a time, as the hallways were just big enough to have four of us stand shoulder to shoulder across it. Which means the mobs could do the same. I also doubted the Queen would boomerang, since this whole sewer was her domain after all. The best we could do was have Dan try to snare both the Queen and one of the blues, and kite both of them while we took on three at a time. I would try to have one of the three aggro me so Jason didn’t have to use all his mana on Wayne before we got to the Queen.

  It was going to be a tough fight, but I was hopeful we would win. And if we didn’t, we at least knew what we were facing next time we came down here.

  Dan went in and started the pull. He started with a cast of snare on the Queen. And thankfully it landed on the first try. Maybe the extra level helped with that. While the other four mobs rushed at Dan, Wayne targeted one with Taunt and then the other with Bash and grabbed aggro on himself. I took a third and backstabbed it, guaranteeing I was going to take aggro. By the time we had established our positions, Dan had hit the last blue with another snare and was kiting them around the room. So far, so good.

  My Agility was nowhere near as high as Dan’s so I could guarantee I was going to get hit. However, I focused on attacking the same mob as Wayne, trying to whittle down each mob. Every ten seconds I would switch mobs and hit the one that I had aggro on, so it wouldn’t change its mind and decide to attack Jason.

  My hit points were steadily going down, but there was nothing I could do about that. Wayne was still looking good though as we finished off the first and moved to the second mob. Jason said he still had 80 percent mana. He shot me one heal, which gave me a sigh of relief.

  We made our way through the second and third mob and Dan started bringing over the other two. We had decided to take out the blue first, as it would be quicker, and would allow us to focus on the Queen without any distractions. Dan took a few hits while Wayne was getting aggro on the Queen, and Jason healed him once. Then we had Dan tank the blue, since his aggro was already established, while the Queen beat on Wayne till we were done with the blue. Jason regenerated mana, allowing Dan to take the hits. This wasn’t out of spite. No matter how the two acted outside of fights, during fights it was all
business. We were sure that we could finish the blue before Dan died, and then he could use his own mana to heal himself. Once that was done he would be back in the fight and making a pin cushion out of the Queen.

  Our plan was brazen, but amazingly it worked. After a short time, we were down to just the queen and Wayne was at full health. Dan was getting there, and Jason was at 50 percent mana. I was the only one that was lower on hit points from keeping aggro on the one blue, and I had 70 percent of my hit points, or a little over 1000 hit points out of my original 1600.

  We had made sure we had Jason buff the poison resist for all of us before we started the fight, as we remembered what the Guardian had done to us. This time, however, the AoE went off when the Queen hit 75% of her life. It was the same spell with the same DoT – 400 hit points total. I know, because it landed on me. Jason and Wayne did not get effected. Dan too was poisoned, but he had his own healing spells, and I did not. The AoE went off again at 50%, and again I was poisoned. This was going to take me dangerously close to dying. Jason said he could heal, but I told him to focus on Wayne, as the Queen was lighting into him with those razor sharp teeth. Wayne was also hit by poison on this go around. Again, Jason’s +35 resistance to poison kept him safe.

  We kept at it, and I looked on with dread as the Queen’s health bar moved closer to 25%. If the prior two times was any indication, I was likely to get poisoned again, and that was going to take me out of the fight. Jason was hollering out his mana count and it too was getting dangerously low.

  At exactly 25% the AoE went off for the last time, and just as I feared, I was poisoned. I knew I wasn’t long for the fight, maybe another minute, so I just kept attacking, letting the group know I was going to die. Dan yelled, “I can heal you bro!” but I told him to focus on killing the bitch before Jason ran out of Mana. When I finally died, the Queen had 10 percent left on her health bar.

  * * *

  As soon as I logged back in from dying I saw that I was no longer level 11. The death had meant a loss of 25 percent experience in my level and that put me back down to level 10 with 84% experience. While that didn’t make me happy, I was more focused on what the guys were yelling in my ear as the fight kept going.